


Going Up?

by BonitaBreezy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Murder, Canon Disabled Character, Complete, Get Together, Ghosts, M/M, Mack is a good guy, Magic, Tower of Terror au, character death but not really, haunted hotels, oh my!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 08:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3112559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1939 teen starlet Skye Shine and four others disappeared without a trace from an elevator at the Hollywood Tower Hotel.  They were never seen or heard from again.  Seventy years later, "Mack" Mackenzie and Bobbi Morse discover that maybe the people in the elevator never actually left the hotel after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Up?

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh I wrote this whole thing in like three days, between working full-time and then beta'd it by myself, so there might still be some mistakes in there. I hope you guys like it, and I apologize if you think anyone (particularly Bobbi) is out of character. I did my best!

The lobby was as busy as Fitz had ever seen it, a buzz of live music from the Tip Top Club pumping through the speakers, the chatter and clicks of reporters taking photographs, and the general din of guests checking in and bellhops moving luggage.  Everything was a flurry of movement, bright light, noise and tightly controlled chaos.

Fitz was a little overwhelmed by it all, and he was a bit glad his father had assigned him to running the elevator rather than checking in or moving luggage.  The elevator was simple and easy. He didn’t have to worry about getting to the right rooms or hurting anyones belongings.  He didn’t have to worry about forgetting words when he spoke to people.  

He was aware it was the simplest job his father could have given him to prove himself, and while part of him was bothered by the apparent lack of trust in his abilities, a larger part was pathetically grateful.  Clearly his father wanted him to inherit the hotel.  His father wanted him to be successful.

Fitz wanted to prove that he could be.

That night was possibly the most important night the Hollywood Tower Hotel had ever had.  It was New Year’s Eve and the popular teenaged actress Skye Shine had just returned from a long publicity tour and was going to by staying at the hotel for a few months while she worked on her newest project.  She was the most high profile star they’d ever hosted, and Fitz’s father had pulled out all the stops to make her first night back a spectacular one.  The party in her honor was already in full swing, even though she hadn’t arrived yet, and everyone who was anyone in Hollywood was up in the Tip Top Club schmoozing.

Suddenly, a burst of noise came from the direction of the front doors and flashbulbs began popping at a blinding rate.  A young woman was making her way through the crowd of reporters, and they parted for her like they were the red sea and she was Moses.  She wore a bright smile and posed cheerfully for the camera, despite the several pointed nudges she received from her stone-faced companion.  As Fitz watched the two women walk through the crowd like it didn’t bother them one bit, two men dressed to the nines in waistcoats and tails slipped into the elevator where Fitz was waiting at the controls.

“Clint, stop tugging at your bow tie,” the older man, who looked perfectly at home in his formal attire, chided.

“I feel like I’m being strangled to death,” the one called Clint muttered, but he stopped tugging at his tie all the same.

“You’re not being strangled,” the first man said, sounding fond. “Don’t forget, you’re debuting in front of the elite.  You have to make a good impression.”

It was at this point Fitz realized that Clint must be Clint Barton, the singer who had managed to wheedle his way into performing a few songs that night.  As far as Fitz could tell, his manager, who must have been the second man, had talked Fitz’s father in circles until he found himself agreeing.  He’d ended up writing it off as a charitable act, of course: giving a nobody a chance at making it big, but Fitz was sure his father was secretly having anxiety about the decision.

“I know, Phil,” Clint sighed, and Fitz could practically feel the nerves radiating from him.

Suddenly the cameras were turned in their direction, the bulbs flashing brightly in their faces as Skye Shine finally made her way towards the elevator, led insistently by her caretaker.  They stepped into the car, and Fitz had a sudden horrifying image of dozens of reporters trying to force their way inside with them, so he hurriedly announced, “Going up!” and hit the button to close the doors.  As they started to slide shut, Skye Shine hurried forward and poked her head out to wave enthusiastically at the reporters.  Her caretaker huffed an annoyed breath and seized the girl around the arm and pulled her back before the doors could close on her head.

“Smile, May, it’s a party!” Skye said, grinning at her companion winningly as Fitz pulled the lever upward and the elevator started to rise.

“That might be so, but I promised your parents I would return you to them in one piece and you don’t seem to be all that concerned about the repercussion of getting your head caught in the elevator doors,” May told her calmly, seeming unaffected by Skye’s smiles and enthusiasm.

“I wasn’t going to let them close on my _head_ ,” Skye huffed.

Both women rolled their eyes at each other in perfect unison and Fitz resisted the urge to smile.  He was only the elevator operator, after all, and he wasn’t supposed to be noticed.

He focused instead on the panel that indicated which floor they were at.  Number eleven lit up with a green light and a cheerful ding, and then suddenly the entire elevator lurched to a jarring halt, the lights flickering off and then back on again.  Skye Shine let out a little shriek as she stumbled forward, catching herself against the doors, and Fitz barely managed to hold himself up by clinging to the lever.

“What in the nine hells was that?” Clint Barton demanded, taking hold of his manager’s elbow as if to steady him.

“I-I-I’m not sure,” Fitze managed to stutter out.  He pushed and pulled desperately at the lever, but the elevator didn’t seem inclined to move.  Of course.  He couldn’t even run the _elevator_ right.

“I’m sorry, the elevator appears to be stuck,” he said finally, when it was clear that nothing would happen. “I’m afraid you’ll have to use the stairs for the last floor.”  

He hit the button for the doors, but they stayed firmly shut.  He frowned at them and hit the button again, but they remained stubbornly closed.

“Oh for the love of-” May started to say, and then she was interrupted by a loud cracking noise like thunder.  There was a flash of green light, a split second of bone-numbing pain, and then nothing.

* * *

 

The Hollywood Tower Hotel cut a huge, imposing figure against the early-afternoon sky.  

At one point it must have been a gorgeous, grand looking building, and honestly it still was in a way, but now it was showing signs of disrepair.  There were scorch marks along the front walls from what looked like an epic lightning strike, some of the letters on the neon sign were tilting this way and that, and the facade was starting to show some deep cracks.  Mack stared up at the building from outside the large iron gates, held shut with a chain and padlock, and shook his head.

“I don’t know, Bobbi,” he said doubtfully. “It looks like that place is getting ready to fall in on itself.”

“No way,” Bobbi retorted cheerfully, unlocking the padlock and unwinding the chain so that she could heft one of the heavy swinging gates forward enough for Mack to get his truck through. “Trust me, I had the codes guys come through and check it out.  The foundation and most everything else is really solid.  The only real problem is that the main elevator is trashed.”

“And that no one’s turned the power on in seventy years,” Mack muttered, but Bobbi pretended that she hadn’t heard him.  Louder, he added, “So why don’t you just get the whole thing replaced?  Hire an elevator company, get them to take out the old one and put in a new one.”

The look Bobbi shot him suggested that he’d done something complete heinous and unforgivable, like slapping her mother.  She started back towards his truck, ranting all the while.

“Mack,” she said flatly. “You want me to replace the elevator?  The elevator is the biggest draw!  Seventy years ago Skye Shine and everyone riding in that very elevator mysteriously disappeared into thin air and were never seen again!  And I’m just supposed to tear it out and put in a new one, so that when people come to see it and ride in it I can tell them, ‘Oh, no, the actual elevator was ripped out like a ton of garbage and taken to the LA dump’?”

“From the sounds of it, that elevator is a ton of garbage,” Mack retorted, sliding in to the driver’s seat and heading up the long driveway to the hotel. “And I don’t know what you expect me to do with it.”

“Mack, you’re a mechanical genius, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she responded, rolling her eyes.

“No, I’m just a _mechanic_ ,” Mack corrected. “I fix cars.  If you’d inherited your great-grandfather’s prized cadillac, we’d be all set.  But I know fuck all about elevators, and to be honest I feel like you’re biting off more than you can chew by trying to reopen this place.  There’s a reason your dad and grandmother never tried to open it back up again.”

“Grandma never tried to open it again because she hated the idea that she inherited what was supposed to be her brother’s legacy,” Bobbi explained patiently. “She thought it was a dishonor to Uncle Leo’s memory to run the hotel without him.  Dad was never interested in running it, but he could never find anyone willing to buy it.”

“Because it’s a gigantic money pit,” Mack snorted.

“It’s not!” Bobbi insisted. “It’s the famous Hollywood Tower Hotel, re-opening after seventy-five years!  And even without that, it’s the last place Skye Shine was ever seen.  There’s a whole huge mystery surrounding it, and people will pay through the nose to stay here, I guarantee it.”

“But only if you can get the elevator working,” Mack said.

“Yeah,” Bobbi admitted. “Only if we can get the elevator working.”

“I don’t understand why you don’t just hire a professional,” Mack sighed.

“Well, I will, if I have to,” Bobbi told him. “I just want you to check it out first, see if you can figure out why it won’t move.  It’s stuck on the eleventh floor.  I don’t want to get screwed on a price because I have no idea what’s wrong with it.”

Mack heaved a heavy sigh, simply because he didn’t want to admit that it was actually a reasonable request, and stopped the truck in front of the large double doors that led to the main lobby.  Bobbi was out of the cab before he even had it in park, bounding up to the doors with the barely-concealed excitement of a puppy.

“I can’t believe I’m finally going to go in,” she breathed, her eyes wide with excitement.

“You haven’t even been inside yet?” Mack demanded, leveling her with an incredulous look.

“Well, I wasn’t going to go in before I knew it was safe,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. “And dad and grandma always just kept it locked up.  Ooh, Mack, come on you have to go in with me.”

Mack tried to roll his eyes, but instead he had to force down a smile, admittedly kind of curious to see what the building would be like.  The only people who’d been in it since Bobbi’s great-grandfather had closed the doors seventy years ago were the people who had gone it to check it’s stability.  Other than that, they would be the first.

The doors creaked noisily as they opened, but they still swung pretty smoothly on their hinges.  The interior was incredibly eerie, and not just because the high arches and hanging lanterns were dripping with cobwebs and the antique furniture was covered in a thick layer dust.  Really, it was more because it looked as if everything had stopped suddenly, the guests chased out, the doors locked, and things left to lie exactly as they had been that night seventy years before.

There was still a set of luggage sitting on one of the luggage carts, and there was mail shoved into the cubbies behind the check-in desk off to the right.  Directly ahead was a large fireplace and sitting area with squat little couches on either side of a long table.  There was a vase in the center of the table filled with flowers that had drooped over the sides and dried.  The left side of the room was more sitting space, filled with little intimate tables and chairs.  One table had a set of playing cards set out, like the players had all gotten up and left in the middle of the game and never returned to finish it.

They looked around the room in a bit of awe, peering around at the furnishings and the creepy signs of life that had been cut off so abruptly.  Not to mention that statue of the owl that looked like it was seconds away from diving to the ground and scooping a mouse up in it’s talons.  Creepy.

“Look, over here!” Bobbi said quickly, gesturing at him to follow her. “Here’s the main elevator.”

It wasn’t much to look at, since it was just a pair of doors, but Bobbi was practically wriggling with excitement.

“I can’t get the doors open because there’s no power,” she explained. “But all it will take is one little call to the power company…”

While she was talking, Mack, dug his fingers into the crack between the two doors, and when he got a good grip, he gave them a shove.  The doors groaned with a shriek of metal, but after the initial push, they slid open fairly easily.

“Or that,” Bobbi finished, immediately pushing forward to peek in to the shaft.

The service elevator was resting on the other side of the shaft opposite them, and Mack wondered if it worked at all.  They wouldn’t be able to tell without power, of course, but it might be useful in case they had to get up to the eleventh floor to take a look inside the broken elevator.  Then again, he wasn’t sure how much he trusted seventy year old elevator cables.

“Look, there it is,” Bobbi breathed reverently, pointing upwards.  Surely enough, eleven stories up sat the notorious elevator.  It looked completely innocuous and innocent up there, and it was a bit mind-blowing that that little black box lay at the heart of so much mystery.

“I don’t know, Bobbi, I still think you should just rip the elevator out and replace it,” he said doubtfully.  His words were followed by a loud shattering noise.  They both jumped back from the shaft in surprise, which was good, because a moment later the doors slammed shut with a deafening clang.

“What the hell?” Bobbi, breathed, pointing over towards the fireplace.  The large vase that had held the dead flowers in the center of the table was now in a thousand pieces on the floor.  It hadn’t been anywhere near the edge, and there was no way that it could have fallen without something to help it along.

“That’s weird, right?” Mack asked, glancing around him to see if he could find someone.  Maybe some punk teenager had seen the gate open and decided to sneak in to take a look?  Perhaps the hotel had some animal residents?  But except for him and Bobbi, the place was completely still and silent,and there were only two sets of footprints in the thick dust on the floor.

“Definitely weird,” Bobbi agreed.  She headed over to the shattered vase, looking around the table like she was trying to find what had knocked it over.  She had just barely bent over to look underneath the table when an inkwell on the check-in desk literally exploded, sending glass flying everywhere.  Mack had just barely finished letting out his surprised shout when a loud, bodiless voice boomed from all around them.

_“GET OUT!”_

Mack certainly didn’t need telling twice.  He grabbed Bobbi by the arm and practically dragged her out of the hotel and on to the terrace.  The doors slammed shut behind them, and Mack swore he heard the lock click firmly into place.

“Holy shit,” Bobbi whispered, and Mack nodded in agreement.

“That had to be some sort of trick, right?” he asked, glancing nervously at the doors like something might come flying out at them. “Some teenagers or something…”

“No, I’ve got the only key,” Bobbi said, jungling the keyring at him. “And there’s no way in without it, we’ve made sure of that.”

“Well, I mean, the place can’t be…”

“Haunted!” Bobbi said happily. “My hotel is haunted!”

Mack could practically see the dollar signs in her eyes.

* * *

 

Somehow, the next day Mack found himself once again standing in the lobby of the Hollywood Tower Hotel.  Bobbi had shown up at the garage at the exact time his shift ended with a gigantic cup of coffee and a pleading expression, and through some sort of magic he didn’t really understand, she had convinced him to come back and try to take a look at the elevator.  

Even though the place was potentially haunted.  

He suspected that, despite her excitement about the idea of ghosts, she was wary of going in by herself.  Whatever had happened the day before, it hadn’t instilled them with the safest of feelings.

When they got inside, they found that all of the shattered glass had been cleaned up, and considering the surprised look on Bobbi’s face, she wasn’t the one who had done it.  If there had ever been any glass in the first place.  Maybe there was a gas leak or something, and they’d just had a shared hallucination.  In a hotel that hadn’t been connected to gas for seventy years.  Right.

“So…” Bobbi said, looking around a little nervously.  “I want to look at the elevator first.”

“I’m sorry, do you remember what happened the last time we looked at the elevator?” Mack grumbled, setting his tool box down on the nearest table. “We nearly got our heads taken off by those doors.”

“Well, yeah,” Bobbi said, shrugging like decapitation wasn’t that big of a deal. “But I mean, I want to _go up_ and look at it.”

“You want to walk up eleven flights of stairs?” Mack asked flatly, wondering why he’d ever let this crazy woman worm her way in to his life.  At best she was going to make him walk up eleven flights of stairs and probably get into an elevator that was notorious for having made people disappear.  At worst they were going to get straight up murdered by angry ghosts.

“Oh, come, don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts,” Bobbi wheedled, even though he was pretty sure she was a bit scared too.

“I don’t know if I believe in ghosts,” Mack said, which was true.  It was much easier to not to believe in ghosts when he wasn’t in a creepy old hotel where glass shattered by itself, though. “But I can tell you I _am_ afraid of getting into an elevator that has had zero maintenance in seventy years.  I’m not a small man, Bobbi, and I’m just not sure I trust that thing to hold up an extra 200 pounds.”

“Well…” Bobbi said, frowning.  Mack was a bit relieved that she seemed to get his point.  Bobbi was smart, of course, but she was also a bit too smart and ambitious for her own good.  Or the good of the people around her. “I mean, I guess we shouldn’t go inside it just yet.  We can’t guarantee that it won’t fall.”

“God, Bobbi, that thing is so unsafe,” Mack sighed, knowing it was futile to try to talk sense in to her, but trying anyway. “You really should just get rid of it and be done with it.”

Almost immediately after he said it, the camping lantern they’d brought in with them flickered and died, and the room grew cold enough that Mack could see his breath.  Bobbi grabbed his arm, her fingernails digging into his skin, but he didn’t say anything because he was kind of glad she’d done it so that he didn’t have to.

“Get out,” a voice hissed, sounding like someone had whispered it directly in his ear.  Mack couldn’t help but jerk away from it.  Bobbi’s surprised yelp revealed she’d probably gotten a similar sort of treatment.  Rather than react like a rational human and getting out, though, Bobbi fixed a glare on her face.

“Hey!” she snapped indignantly, and Mack winced.

“Don’t piss it off, Bob,” he muttered, but she just planted her hands on her hips and glared defiantly into the air.

“This is _my_ hotel,” she announced. “I’ll be in here if I damn well please.  I’m sorry you’ve got some sort of beef with people being here but you better get used to it because this place is going to be open for business--” Bobbi cut herself off with squawk of surprise when one of the lamps flew off a table and just barely missed her head.

“Oh yeah, big tough ghost can’t even face me like a--”

The double doors to the terrace slammed open, and suddenly Mack felt like he was being pushed along.  His feet slid uselessly across the floor, and he could hear Bobbi cussing behind him and could only assume that she was being forcefully removed as well.

“Hey, this is my hotel!” she yelled, but the ghost didn’t seem to care.  As soon as they were across the threshold, the pushing stopped, and Bobbi immediately turned around to march back inside, but came to an abrupt halt when several books from one of the tables went sailing past her head, forcing her to a stop, and the doors slammed shut and locked again.

Mack no longer had any doubts about ghosts.

“Okay, so what now?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and regarding his friend as she banged her fist on the door and insulted the ghost’s parentage. “It seems to me that you’re losing this battle.”

“I am _not_ losing this battle,” she growled. “I’ll hire an exorcist if I have to.”

“Bobbi, I think you’re being kind of unreasonable about this…”

“This hotel is my family’s legacy!” Bobbi snapped, and then, more softly, she added, “I’ve always loved this hotel, ever since I was little.  Grandma used to take me here and let me play in the gardens. There was more land, back then, before we had to sell most of it off because the taxes got too high.  I used to dream of opening this place back up again one day.  And now I’ve got my chance and I’m going to do it.  No stupid ghost with an over-inflated sense of importance is going to stop me.”

Mack sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, but it was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to be swayed.  He glanced at the locked doors, the hotel still and silent, and tried to come up with some sort of solution.  If the ghost could push them around and throw things, there was no telling what it might be capable of.

“Maybe we can try and make peace with it?” he suggested, though the idea sounded a bit flat even to him.

“Yeah, maybe…” Bobbi said doubtfully. “I mean...it’s probably Skye Shine, isn’t it?  Who else would it be?”

“Skye Shine could never be so cruel and angry,” a third voice spoke up, making them both jump in surprise, their adrenaline still running high from being bodily removed from the hotel by an unseen force. “I can guarantee you, whatever kind of evil spirit you’re dealing with, it is certainly whatever is left of Melinda May.”

An old, white-haired man was standing at the bottom of the steps, holding one of the books that had been thrown at Bobbi in his weathered hands.  It was a large tome bound in brown leather, and he clutched it to his chest, like it was a long-lost friend he’d finally found again.

“This is private property,” Bobbi offered weakly.  It was clear she was a lot more interested in whatever information he may have had than she was in getting rid of him.

“I know,” the old man offered, not looking apologetic in the least. “Just, I’d heard that someone had opened the gates, and I couldn’t resist coming up to take a look around.”

“Right,” Bobbi said. “Who is Melinda May?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit down,” the old man said. “I’m afraid my legs aren’t quite what they used to be.”  

He tottered over to one of the terrace lounge chairs and lowered himself on to it slowly.  Mack could see that Bobbi was chomping at the bit to start interrogating him, but she held off until he’d settled his weight.  The second he was off his feet, she took the next seat over and leaned towards him in interest.

“Who is Melinda May?” she asked again.

“Well, she’s the one who made Skye Shine disappear of course.”

He said it nonchalantly, like he hadn’t just offered a blasé answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the last century as if it were undisputed fact.  Skye Shine was more famous for having disappeared than she was for the few movies she’d acted in.  It was a tragic tale of a young starlet cut down at the height of her career, and it was exactly the type of misfortunate people gobbled up.

“What do you mean, she’s the one who made Skye Shine disappear?” Bobbi asked, a bit breathless.

“Melinda May was hired by Skye’s parents to accompany her on her many press tours,” the old man explained. “She kept Skye in line and made sure she got home safely to her parents.  She did her job, but in reality she hated poor Skye and decided to get rid of her.  Using this book.”

Bobbi was hanging on every word, her eyes wide, but Mack was a little more skeptical.

“And how did a book make Skye disappear?” he asked sardonically.

“It’s a book of spells!” the man insisted, flipping the book open and showing him a yellowed page with a picture with tons of cramped black writing on it. “May was a witch, and she used this book to curse Skye!  Except something must have gone wrong, because when Skye disappeared, so did everyone in the elevator, including Melinda May herself!”

“And so now she’s a ghost haunting the hotel?” Mack asked dryly.  Ghosts he could believe, but only because he had just been man-handled by one.  Magic was a whole other story.

“Most certainly,” the old man answered, seemingly convinced that what he was saying was true.  

“And how do you even know all of this?” Bobbi asked, eyeing the book with interest.  The old man didn’t seem all that inclined to release it long enough to show it to her, though.

“Because I was there!” the old man answered, his eyes wide and a little manic. “My family lived in this hotel, and I knew Skye Shine.  Everyone loved her, and I can’t think of anyone else who would ever want to do her harm.”

“You lived in the hotel?” Bobbi demanded. “You were there the night she disappeared?  Why didn’t you say something to anyone about it?”

“I wanted to, but no one would believe me,” he said sadly. “I saw her doing her spell, though I didn’t know what it was at the time.  After they disappeared, Mr. Fitz shut down the hotel the same night and I never got a chance to find where she’d hidden the book.”

Mack wasn’t sure he believed it, but it was pretty obvious the old man did.  Maybe he was crazy, or maybe he was on to something with the Melinda May situation.  Mack didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.  He was a mechanic.  Ghosts and magic were a little above his paygrade.

“So what do we do?” Bobbi asked, and the old man shrugged helplessly.

“I don’t know.  I was hoping that I could read through this book, find a way to reverse the spell, perhaps.”

“Do you think you could do that?” Bobbi asked, her eyebrows hiking up. “Get that ghost out of my hotel?”

“I might be able to,” the old man said thoughtfully. “If you’ll let me take the book home, I can read it over and try to come up with a solution.  I’d do anything to help Skye, if I could.”

Bobbi glanced over at Mack in askance, and he just shrugged.  He didn’t think letting the man take the book could hurt, at any rate.

“Okay, sure,” she decided. “I’ll write down my cell number for you, you go ahead and read the book and call me if you find anything.  My name’s Bobbi Morse.”

The old man broke into a wide grin and shook her hand enthusiastically.

“Thank you so much, Miss Morse,” he said. “My name is Grant Ward.”

* * *

 

It wasn’t until Mack was on his way to work the next morning that he remembered he’d left his tool box in the hotel.  He’d debated for a long while about whether he should wait for Bobbi to go get it, but he knew he’d probably end up needing it for work if he just decided to leave it there.

Luckily, the hotel wasn’t far from his garage, and the fence hadn’t been locked up the last time Bobbi had left.  He tried to remind himself, as he drove up the long driveway to the front of the hotel, that it was probably totally safe.  Sure, there was some sort of ghostly spirit of a maybe-witch that had physically removed him from the building the day before, but so what?  It was probably fine.

The hotel looked perfectly innocent in the California sunlight, if not still rundown. Vines had taken over a lot of the stone facade, giving the place an abandoned sort of feeling, and he didn’t want to think about all the money and work it was going to take to get the place back to it’s former splendor.  If Bobbi was ever able to get to that point.

He got out of his truck, resisting the urge to leave it running so that he could grab his tools and run.  Sure, gas had gone down, but it was still expensive to fill up his truck, so he needed to stop being such a baby.  The four steps up to the terrace seemed a little daunting, but he went up them anyway.  All he had to do was go in, grab his toolbox, and leave.  It would take five seconds and he probably wouldn’t get slaughtered by a crazy ghost.

Mack steeled his nerves and turned the door handle.  It was locked.

“Damn it,” he grumbled, letting his forehead thumb against the door. “I just need my toolbox and then I’m out of here, I swear.  I don’t even want to re-open this place but I owe Bobbi and a favor and now...”

He heard the lock click, and he lifted his head just in time for the door to drift open gently.  By itself.  Which wasn’t totally and completely creepy or anything.

“Uh, thanks,” he said to the open air, hoping he wasn’t being lured into a trap.  He was probably too paranoid.  He was probably just scaring himself.  But that door had definitely been locked.  He could see his toolbox resting on one of the spindly tables about halfway through the room.  He steeled his nerves once more, took a breath, and stepped inside.  

He didn’t run to grab his tools, but he certainly power-walked.  He was six-foot-four and 220 pounds of muscle, but that wouldn’t do shit against something he couldn’t hit, and damn it, he felt unsafe. He grabbed the handle of his toolbox, letting out a breath of relief.  Halfway there.  He turned on his heel and took one step before she stopped dead in his tracks.  There was a man standing between him and the door.

He wasn’t a large man, maybe 5’8” or so.  He had bright blue eyes and curly brown hair, and he was actually pretty cute.  He was definitely the type of guy that Mack would hit on in a bar.  Except they weren’t in a bar.  They were in a haunted hotel and the man was wearing pressed black pinstriped pants with a maroon and gold jacket and matching pillbox hat.  Again, a little eccentric, but not too terrifying, except for the fact that his jacket had the Hollywood Tower Hotel logo on it, and Mack knew from the millions of pictures Bobbi had forced on him that the strange little outfit was an exact match to the ones the bellhops had worn before the hotel had shut down.

“What are you doing here?” he asked with a thick accent, maybe Scottish or Irish, Mack didn’t really know.

“Toolbox,” Mack spat out, tightening his grip on the handle, as if using the heavy metal box as a weapon would work on ghost.

“I know that,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I mean what are you doing here?  Your friend, she keeps yelling about the...the...this place, she says it’s hers.”

He seemed to be having trouble getting some of his words out, like he’d forgotten what he was trying to say half way through and had to come up with another word for it.    It went quite a way towards making him seem more human, and Mack latched on to it.  

The Bellhop crossed his arms and scowled at Mack, but he stayed where he was and Mack felt himself relaxing just a fraction.  It was less scary now that he could see the ghost, though he couldn’t imagine this sweet-looking little guy throwing things like he had yesterday.  He didn’t seem malicious at all, and it was possible he was just as afraid of Mack and Bobbi as they were of him.

“That’s Bobbi,” Mack explained. “Barbara Morse.  She owns the hotel.  It belonged to her great-grandfather.”

The bellhop looked surprised for a moment, his mouth dropping open in a little ‘o’ and then he wrangled his expression under control and tried for a scowl again.  He mostly looked like a disgruntled puppy, but Mack chose to keep that observation to himself.

“What does she want?” the bellhop demanded.

“She wants to open the hotel again,” Mack shrugged. “I think this place is a death trap, but she’s determined to open it again.  Something about fond memories with her grandmother.”

“And what about us?” he demanded. “I expect we’re meant to be some...a…a…”

“A sideshow?” Mack suggested weakly and the bellhop pointed at him and nodded vigorously.

“Yes, that!”

“Bobbi didn’t know you were here,” Mack told him, eyeing the open door behind him.  

In theory, he was a ghost and Mack could just run right through him, right?  Apparently the bellhop saw where he was looking because the door slammed shut behind him.  They both jumped at the loud slam.

“But now that she does, she’ll make a spectacle of us,” the bellhop insisted, and that time the word caught Mack’s attention.

“Us?” he asked, wondering if it was some creepy vague reference to how Mack was never going to leave the hotel.  It was a terrible time for _Hotel California_ lyrics to be stuck in his head. “Who’s us?”

“The ghosts, of course,” a second voice said, from behind Mack, and it took everything he had in him not to jump and shriek like a little girl.

The voice belonged to an Asian teenager who was maybe sixteen years old.  She was wearing a cream-colored short-sleeved dress with a long, flowing skirt and a belted waist.  The skirt hung to the floor and the neckline showed her collarbones but was still modest.  He wasn’t a fashion expert or anything, but he knew it was old because he’d seen it in pictures.  He’d also seen the girl wearing it in pictures.  Namely, in pictures of Skye Shine, posing and smiling on the night she disappeared.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Holy shit!  You’re…”

“Skye Shine, at your service,” she said, giving a little curtsy, along with a cheeky smile.

“So everyone who disappeared in that elevator is still here,” he said, his voice a little hushed.

“And here we remain.  Forever doomed to haunt these halls in too-tight bow ties,” Another voice added, sounding mournful.  A man who must have been in his thirties appeared, perched on the check-in desk in an old-fashioned black tuxedo.

“For god’s sake, seventy years of this,” snapped another man, who appeared suddenly standing next to the man who was sat on the countertop. He was older than the others, his hair thinning a bit in front, though he looked perfectly at ease and comfortable in his own tuxedo. “It’s a _bow tie_ , not a noose.”

“Could have fooled me,” the first guy muttered petulantly.  It was taking everything Mack had not break out in hysterical giggles and check himself in to the first mental hospital he could find.

“Guys, I was handling it,” the bellhop protested, rolling his eyes.

“Fitz, we haven’t had anyone to talk to except each other for seventy years, can you really blame us for coming to take a peek?” Skye asked. “Especially at such a good looking man.”

“Uh,” Mack said intelligently, trying to stay calm.  Teenage girls flirted at him occasionally, and it was really weird and uncomfortable.  There were no words to describe how much more weird and uncomfortable it was when the teenage girl was also dead.

“Skye, leave the poor man alone,” the older man called, his tone admonishing but affectionate.

“Aw, Phil, let her be,” the man who hated bow ties insisted. “I can’t imagine you’d remember what it’s like to be young and in love with every attractive man you lay eyes on…”

“Of course not,” Phil responded dryly. “But I’d wager you could, Clint.”

Clint placed his hand over his heart and made a hurt face  and then stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes.  Phil huffed in annoyance at him, but he also couldn’t repress the tiniest of smiles.

“Um,” Mack spoke up, and all of them turned to look at him simultaneously. “I mean, it’s cool to meet you all and totally not freaky or terrifying, but I have to get to work?  I just, uh, needed my tools.”  He hefted the toolbox up awkwardly.

“You never...uh...you didn’t...answer my...the uh…”

“Question,” Mack finished, and he was surprised when Fitz practically beamed at him. “Look, man, I don’t know what Bobbi plans to do here.  I’m a mechanic and she just wanted me to check out the old elevator to see if I could fix it.”

They all went completely and totally still, like he’d just said something extremely offensive.  And considering they’d all died in that elevator, maybe he had.  He was in the middle of wondering if he should apologize when a loud slamming noise came from somewhere upstairs, and they all jumped.

“It’s Melinda,” Phil said quietly, glancing upward. “You should go.”

“But Phil…!” Skye’s protest was cut off by the sharp look that Phil cut her, and she went silent.

“You should go,” he said again, and Mack wasn’t going to protest.  

He went for the door, again, not running, but walking quicker than he normally would.  For a moment, he didn’t think Fitz was going to move out of the way, but right as Mack reached him he let out a heavy sigh and disappeared.  Mack went out the door, ignoring the way it closed gently behind him by itself, and hopped into his truck.  He was going to be stupidly late to open the shop, but he didn’t even care.

He grabbed his phone out of the cup holder and called Bobbi.

“You are not going to fucking believe what just happened to me,” he said when she answered.

* * *

 

“So what Mack saw basically proves that May’s the reason they’re all there, right?” Bobbi asked, leaning against her kitchen counter.  

Grant Ward was seated at the table flipping through the spellbook, and Mack was leaning against the door jamb, still a little unsettled by the weird old man who had appeared practically from nowhere.  After Mack had told Bobbi all about what had happened at the hotel, she’d insisted that they meet at her apartment after work.  She’d barely given him enough time to shower the motor oil off himself and grab something to eat before demanding he attend her.

“I knew it all along,” Ward insisted darkly, his wrinkly face folding into a scowl. “That woman was no good.  She was always trying to fill Skye’s head with lies and keep us away from each other.  I was her only real friend, and the only one who knew how evil May was and how much Skye was afraid of her.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell her parents?” Bobbi asked with a frown.

“She was terrified May would hurt them.  She thought she was safe, I guess, because without her May wouldn’t have a job, but as we know, she was wrong about that.”

“They did all seem really afraid of her,” Mack spoke up. “When she made a noise they all froze up and made me get out.  And she must be the be the one who was being so violent.  I had thought it was the bellhop at first, but…”

“Aha!” Ward suddenly cried, his trembling finger pointing to a sentence in the book. “I think I know what happened!”

“Well, come on, then,” Bobbi demanded, going to sit at the table.

“You see, the spell May used was supposed to hit Skye and damn her to eternal torment in hell,” Ward explained casually, like that wasn’t the most awful thing ever. “She used Skye’s hair as an identifier.”  He held up a curl of dark brown hair tied in a ribbon, which had apparently been acting as a place marker in the book.  Ew.

“The problem is, when the spell hit, she was in close quarters with everyone in the elevator and it hit them all.  But there was only one indentifier for Skye herself, not one for everyone in the elevator, so instead of being sent to hell, everyone in the elevator just became strange half-versions of themselves, like ghosts, and they were doomed to haunt the hotel until someone undoes the spell.”

“Well, I mean...we can do that, right?” Bobbi asked hesitantly, after a moment of silence when they all absorbed the news. “You seem to know about magic, Mr. Ward, and we can just do, like, a counterspell or something, right?”

“Right!” Ward responded, grinning widely. “A spell of passion can only be countered by its contrary!  My love for Skye should counteract May’s hatred for her!  With this book, it will be simple.  All we need is something that belonged to each of the people in the elevator, and I can cast the spell tomorrow night!”

“Tomorrow night?” Mack demanded. “That’s really soon, isn’t it?  We need more time.”

“It has to be tomorrow,” Ward insisted. “It has to be the same night the original curse was cast.  Skye’s already waited to rest for seventy years.  I won’t make her wait another one.”

“Right, shit, okay,” Mack sighed. “I guess we better start looking.”

“I’ve already got Skye’s hair and May’s handkerchief,” Ward informed them, gesturing to the two items laying innocuously on the table.  “They were in the book.”

“So we just need Clint, Phil, and…”

“Uncle Leo,” Bobbi finished. “I’ve got a trunk of Grandma’s old things in the attic.  There has to be something that belonged to Uncle Leo in there.  She missed him so much, her whole life, she had to have kept something.”

It suddenly occurred to Mack that “Uncle Leo” must be Fitz the bellhop, and he wondered how strange it must be for Bobbi to know that the man she’d grown up hearing fond stories about had been inside the hotel all along.

“Okay, but what about the other two?” Mack asked. “Where are we supposed to find things of theirs?”

“They were staying at the hotel, weren’t they?” Bobbi shrugged. “Once everyone realized that they’d gone missing, Grandpa Fitz shut the place down that same night.  It stands to reason that their bags must still be there, right?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Mack said thoughtfully. “I guess I’ll head back tonight, then.”

“But how are we supposed to get in without May finding out what we’re up to?” Bobbi asked, frowning.

“I don’t know, maybe the ghosts will help,” Mack offered. “They seemed afraid of her, but maybe they’d be willing to be brave enough to fight back if they knew we’re going to help free them.”

Okay, so Mack really didn’t know shit about ghosts, especially these specific ghosts, but he knew that if he was in a situation where he was trapped for seventy years, he’d fight like hell to break free if he was given the chance.  He could only hope that they felt the same way.

Armed with Bobbi’s keys and another camping lantern, Mack made his way back to the Hollywood Tower Hotel.  It was well after dark when he got there, and he wasn’t sure why he had expected to see signs of life.  He never had before, after all.  

He let himself inside as quietly as the doors would let him and no ghosts were waiting for him, as far as he could tell.  He switched on the lantern, casting an eerie glow across the abandoned room, and tried to ignore the goosebumps on his skin.  The place stayed quiet as he approached the check-in guest and started flipping through the guest book.  About halfway up the page, one name over the other, he found Clinton Barton and Phillip Coulson scrawled in the same neat handwriting.  They were in adjoining rooms on the sixth floor, and Mack groaned at the idea of climbing six sets of stairs.

“What are you doing?” Fitz asked, appearing next to him suddenly enough to make Mack yelp.

“Shit, man!” he hissed, trying to keep his voice low.  He really didn’t want to attract May’s attention. “Keep it down!”

“Why?” Fitz asked, his brow furrowing. “And what are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to help you,” Mack answered, and suddenly there was a flash of light and Skye was there on the other side of the counter.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I knew he’d fix the elevator!  I told you guys!”

“I dunno,” Clint drawled.  He appeared without any fanfare, no flash of light.  One second there was nothing and the next there was.  It was more disconcerting than the flash, honestly. “He seemed pretty keen to tear the whole thing out.  He said so before.”

“Yeah, and then May threw a vase on the floor like a pouting toddler,” Skye said, grinning like the very thought delighted her.

“A very expensive vase,” Fitz added darkly.

“I don’t understand what anything has to do with fixing the elevator,” Mack admitted, glancing between the bickering trio.  It was obvious they’d spent a lot of time together.  Despite their jibes, they seemed rather close.

“You said you want to help us,” Skye said, raising her eyebrows. “We need you to fix the elevator.”

“But why?” Mack asked.  It all kept coming back to that elevator.  Everyone was so obsessed with fixing it, but the best place for it was the city dump, in Mack’s opinion.

“We have to get to the party,” Phil explained, appearing a few paces behind Clint.

“What party?” Mack asked, completely confused.  Didn’t they understand that he might be able to help break their curse?  It made no sense for them to be caught up on elevators and parties.

“The party, the one for Skye,” Fitz explained, sounding frazzled. “The elevator...it...it...we never made it.”

“The party for...the party from the night you all disappeared?” Mack asked incredulously.  

He glanced around at the dusty, rundown hotel and wondered if it was possible that they didn’t notice.  It was clear, of course, that they knew something had happened and that they’d been stuck there for a while, but maybe they weren’t as aware as Mack had thought.

“Right,” Skye nodded encouragingly, like they were trying to explain something to a very simple child. “We all had to be at that party for important reasons, but we never made it.  The elevator stopped and there was a flash of light, and ever since we’ve been here, like this.  We don’t know why.  But if we can make it to the party, we can be free, I know it.”

“The party’s been over for seventy years,” Mack finally said, at a loss.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Phil interrupted, a dark scowl crossing his face. “The party never ended.”

“We hear it every New Year’s,” Clint added, making an attempt to cross his arms and then frowning when his jacket pulled too tight across his shoulders for him to manage it.  Instead, he pointed up at a speaker box mounted above the elevator. “They’re waiting for us.”

“But we can’t get there because the elevator’s stuck,” Skye said glumly. “We tried taking the stairs once, but we can’t get past the eleventh floor.  It’s a curse.”  Mack wasn’t sure she knew how right she was about that.

“And then at 8:05 the party ends until the next year,” Fitz sighed. “It’s torture.”

“If we could just get to the party, the curse would be broken,” Phil said, and he sounded absolutely certain of that.

“Guys, I don’t think that’s the answer,” Mack said, frowning at them. “But we think we’ve found a way to help...see, the problem is Melinda May.”

They all glanced at each other with furrowed eyebrows and then a woman’s voice demanded, “Did someone say my name?”

A beautiful yet severe looking Asian woman appeared in front of the rest of the group, her eyes narrowed angrily at Mack.  They all shuffled slightly to make room for her, standing back.  She was dressed in a black gown, simple but obviously for a party.  Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun.  Mack could see why they were afraid of her.

“I thought I scared you off,” she said to Mack.

“You tried,” Mack retorted, glaring at her.  He felt suddenly very protective of these poor lost souls who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the victims of underserved hatred. “But it takes more than that.”

“Why are you here?” she demanded, and her icy glare made Mack feel a bit small.  He’d never felt small a day in his life.  He squared his shoulders and straightened up before answering.

“I’m here because I know what you did,” he growled at her. “I know how you cursed Skye because you hated her, and I know what you did wrong to make it affect all of you and not just her.  I know it’s your fault you’re all trapped here, and I’m going to make sure these innocent people are freed from your horrible curse.”

May blinked in surprise and then glanced back at Skye, who shrugged.

“What are you talking about?” Clint asked incredulously. “Melinda would never hurt Skye.”

The rest of the ghosts made murmuring sounds of agreement and nodded, stepping a little closer to May like they were drawing in ranks around her.  It certainly didn’t look like she’d spent the last seventy years terrorizing them all.

“But…you’re all afraid of her,” Mack said, though he suddenly wasn’t as sure of that as he had been a few minutes before.

“Well, yes,” Phil said. “It’s good to have a healthy fear of Melinda.  But she loves Skye like her own child, and she’d never do anything to hurt her.”

“I protected Skye in life and I’ll protect her in death, until I can get her safe to her parents at the party,” May said fiercely.  Skye smiled and bumped their shoulders together companionably.  May let out an unimpressed sounding huff of breath, but when she looked at Skye her eyes lightened a bit and she quirked the tiniest of smiles.  Mack couldn’t deny it was a look of love.

“Then...I don’t understand,” Mack said slowly. “If you didn’t cast the curse, then who did?”

“I don’t know,” Melinda answered, stiff again. “One minute we were in the elevator on the way to the party and the next there was a bright flash of light and we were stuck here.  I don’t know who did this to us, or why, but I do know to break the curse, we have to get to the party.  It’s been so long, I don’t care much who did it or why.”

“Mack says he can fix the elevator!” Skye blurted suddenly, grinning at May.

“Whoa, whoa, I never said that,” Mack insisted, putting his hands up in surrender. “I’m a car mechanic, I can’t fix elevators.  And no one is going to come out on New Year’s Eve to fix a seventy year old elevator in an abandoned hotel.”

“But Fitz can help!” Skye insisted. “He’s really smart, he went to MIT!”

“If you know how to fix it, why haven’t you?” Mack asked Fitz, whose face flushed.

“Well, I don’t actually know anything about elevators specifically, just mechanics” he said, frowning. “And there was an accident.  I’m not...I can’t…” He held up his right hand, showing Mack how much it trembled. “I’m not what I used to be.  My hands can’t do what they used to do. It was hard enough when I was still corporeal, but like this it takes a lot of...um...a lot of...I have to focus very hard to even touch things.  And that makes it worse.”

“Okay,” Mack said slowly, absorbing the information. He already knew they had him, because he just couldn’t resist helping people when they needed it. “You guys are totally sure that getting to the party will break the curse?”

“Absolutely,” Skye said with an authoritative nod.

“Then I guess I’ll be here first thing tomorrow.  But, in the meantime, I’d like to get something personal from both of you,” he said, indicating Phil and Clint. “We’ve got a counter-curse we’re trying to work on and we need personal items from all the victims.  It’ll be a good back up plan, if nothing else.”

“And you already have things from the rest of us?” Skye asked, frowning suspiciously.  

“There were things belonging to you and May in the spellbook,” Mack said, and Skye’s frown deepened. “And Bobbi says her grandmother was very close to Fitz, so we figure there must be something in the attic that belonged to him.”

“How is she?” Fitz asked suddenly. “My sister.”

“I never met her,” Mack said honestly. “According to Bobbi, she died years ago.”

“Ah, yes,” Fitz said slowly, looking sad. “That would make sense.”

“I’ll be here first thing tomorrow,” Mack repeated, suddenly desperate to wipe the sadness from his face.  It was possible that he had a tiny crush on Fitz.  Whatever.  No one had to know. “We’ll fix the elevator together, and you can meet her at the party.”

“And I’ll show my father I can still do things right.  And Skye can meet up with her parents,” Fitz added, a small, shy smile lighting up his face “and May can finally finish her job.”

“And I’ll sing on a real stage for the first time,” Clint said wistfully, grinning at Phil.

“And I’ll finally be able to get to the most important engagement of my life,” Phil said.

“Do you think you’ll really be able to do it?” Skye asked, her voice quiet.

The room fell quiet for a minute as they all thought about what Mack’s help could mean for them.  Mack wasn’t quite sure where their thoughts were going, but he was willing to bet it had a lot to do with those very important tasks they never got to finish.  He wanted to help them and break their curse, even though he didn’t have any real reason to feel that way.

“I don’t know,” Mack answered honestly. “But I’ll do my best.”

He left that night with a pair of spectacles, a pocket watch (“that was a gift and it’s very important to me so you better not hurt it,” Clint had said), a list of things he and Fitz had come up with that they thought they might need to fix the elevator, and a churning anxiety in his stomach that he would fail the poor souls who only wanted to make it to a party so that they could complete tasks they’d been waiting for for seventy years.

* * *

 

If Mack didn’t know any better, he’d think the curse had somehow extended itself to him, simple for wanting to help.

His alarm didn’t go off the next morning, and by the time he woke up it was well past ten o’ clock, the time that he’d promised Fitz he’d be there by.  He had a text from Bobbi asking him to stop by before he went to the hotel, and he hardly spared five minutes for a shower before getting dressed and out the door.  

Halfway to Bobbi’s, he realized he’d forgotten the things Clint and Phil had given him, and he had to go back and get them.  By the time he finally got to Bobbi’s, it was past eleven thirty, and he tried not to think guiltily of Fitz waiting for him in the hotel.

He was surprised to find Ward already there when he arrived.  There were about fifteen different candles set on the table, along with the spell book, Skye’s hair, May’s handkerchief, and a maroon and black pillbox hat that must have belonged to Fitz.

“It was the only thing I could be sure was his,” Bobbi explained, running her finger along the faded material. “Grandma must have grabbed it from his room before Grandpa Fitz had it closed off and kept it all her life.  It’s so sad, to think if she’d just gone in the hotel she could have seen him.  But she never wanted to set foot in it again, after he disappeared.”

“But it will all be okay, after tonight,” Ward spoke up. “Tonight I’ll cast this spell and they’ll all get what they should have.”

“Right,” Mack said, not thinking too hard about the wording of that statement.  Ward was definitely kinda creepy even though he seemed so desperate to help.  Seventy years of guilt would do that to a person, probably. “Well, here are the items from the other two victims.  I’ve got to get to the hardware store, Fitz is waiting.”

“Oh, _Fitz_ is waiting,” Bobbi repeated grinning at him.

“What?” he demanded, even though he knew exactly what.

“I think you’ve got a crush on my great uncle, is all,” Bobbi said nonchalantly, studying her nails innocently in between shooting wicked looks at him.

“He’s a ghost,” Mack retorted, even though he did think Fitz was very cute and he liked how determined he seemed to protect his friends.

“Still, I’ve seen pictures, and he is exactly your type,” Bobbi told him. “Is that why you’re suddenly okay with fixing the elevator instead of replacing it?  Have you fallen for Uncle Leo’s undeniable charm?”

“He died seventy years ago,” Mack reminded her sharply. “Even if I was interested, I think it’s pretty obvious nothing will come from it.  I just want to help them because it sucks that they’re trapped and I’m a nice person.  I don’t know anything about elevators, but I’m gonna do my best because that’s all I can do.”

“Okay,” Bobbi said, but her grin didn’t die down.  Mack scoffed at her and grabbed his keys.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “You should stop by later and talk to Fitz.  I’m sure he’d love to hear about your grandmother.”

“Yeah,” Bobbi said slowly, her grin shrinking. “Yeah, I will.”

* * *

 

“You’re late,” Fitz said as soon as Mack was through the door.

“Yeah, I know, sorry,” Mack said. “A whole lotta shit happened today.  But I’m here, let’s do this.”

“This is important…” Fitz trailed off looking frustrated, like he was trying to come up with a word that he just couldn’t find.

“I know it’s important, man, I know,” he tried to reassure the bellhop, but Fitz just shook his head.

“No, I’ve only just realized I don’t know your name.”

“Oh,” Mack said, surprised.  They hadn’t really done much in the way of introductions, but still. “My name’s Alphonso Mackenzie.  You can call me Mack.”

“Leopold Fitz,” Fitz responded, and then with an amused chuckle, “You can call me Fitz.”

“So where is everyone else?” Mack asked as Fitz lead him to a door a few feet from the elevator   marked with fading letters that read “Employees Only”.  

“Around,” Fitz answered cryptically.

The door opened to a set of narrow, steep steps that lead down into pitch blackness.  For a moment, Mack considered being creeped out at the idea of descending into darkness where he wouldn’t be able to see anything coming at him, and then he remembered he was already acquainted with the spooky things that inhabited the Hollywood Tower.

Fitz walked straight into the dark like it was no problem, and Mack wondered if he could somehow see into the blackness where the light from the lantern didn’t quite reach.  Probably not.  He probably just knew there was nothing to fear from the hotel, he’d been there so long.  Or, he was content with the knowledge that there was nothing more that could be done to hurt him, as he was already dead.

It was a bit strange, really.  If Mack didn’t know better, he wouldn’t have had any clue that Fitz wasn’t alive.  He looked completely solid and he walked around on the ground instead of floating as movies suggested ghosts would do.  He didn’t seem to be stuck in any sort of state of re-enacting the things he did in life.  He was just like a normal person going about their day to day, except that he was dead and hadn’t left the hotel in seventy years.

“I mean, around where?  What have you guys been doing all this time?” Mack pressed.  

Fitz’s shoulders tightened, almost imperceptibly, and then he just shrugged.

“We’ve just been around,” he said. “Sometimes...it’s like we’re nowhere at all.  And then we’re here.  Phil and I have read all the books in the library.  Skye and Clint do a lot of singing.  It’s...we pass the time.  Any way we can.”

"Sounds like it's been hard," Mack said.

"Yeah," Fitz answered softly, and then more firmly, "But here's uh, the um...the place where we can fix it."

Mack held the camping lantern up to the circuit board and cussed quietly. He didn't know elevators, but he certainly knew enough about mechanics to know it didn't look good.  The circuits look positively decrepit, the board was filled with dust and god knew what else.  Some of the wires were sticking out willy-nilly, like someone (Fitz, presumably) had tried to mess with them.  Most of them were brittle, if not cracked entirely.  Before they could do anything about actually getting the elevator to work, they’d have to replace the wires at best and jerry-rig new circuits at worst.

He raised the lantern higher and looked up at the elevator cables.  They were a bit far off, but he could tell that the ones for the main elevator were in pretty bad shape, fraying in a way that most certainly wouldn’t pass a codes inspection.  They certainly weren’t in a condition that Mack would trust to carry an elevator with five people up twelve stories.  The service elevator looked to be in much better condition, possibly because it hadn’t been hit by the curse the way the main elevator had.

“I don’t know about this, man,” he sighed. “This whole set-up looks like hell.”

“It doesn’t look good,” Fitz agreed, chewing on his bottom lip.

“I’m serious, I don’t even know if the cables on the main elevator can take anymore weight than the elevator itself.  The service elevator would be a much better bet.”

“It has to be the main elevator,” Fitz insisted, and the look he fixed Mack with was so serious and determined that all he could do was grimace and nod.

“All right, then,” he sighed. “Let’s get to work.”

* * *

 

“So can I ask what happened?” Mack asked a few hours later, after his eyes had gotten so strained from working in near darkness that he’d had to stop for a break.

After they’d gone upstairs and discovered it was already dark outside, Mack’s stomach had started growling fiercely and he’d called for a pizza delivery and they’d settled onto the couches (Mack sending up a flurry of dust when he sat, Fitz not actually making a dent in the cushion, as if he wasn’t even there at all) to rest for a bit.

“We’ve told you, we don’t know…”

“No, I mean what happened to you,” Mack clarified. “With your hands and all.  It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, but…”

“I was ice skating with my sister,” Fitz said quietly. “After our first year at University, we took a trip to Scotland to visit our gran and we went skating on the pond on her property.  The ice started to break and I...I...um…” he made a motion with his hands, like he was shoving something away from him.

“You pushed her out of the way,” Mack supplied, and Fitz nodded.

“Right. And I fell in, and nearly drowned.  Only by chance that I didn’t.  There was some hypothermia and after that I was never the same again.  Can’t talk, can’t use my hands.  Useless.”

He looked so bitter about it all that it made Mack’s stomach turn.  He couldn’t really think he was useless, could he?  He’d saved his sister, after all.

“Well, I didn’t know you before,” Mack said lightly. “So I can’t speak for that guy.  But you right now?  You’re not useless.  You’re smart and you care about those people who just happened to get in an elevator with you.  You’re gonna save them, and yourself, by helping me fix that elevator.  You saved your sister’s life, and she went on to have a son who had a daughter who is one of my best friends in the world, and the reason I’m here right now to help you.  So I think you’re a pretty good guy to have around in a crisis.”

“I suppose,” Fitz muttered, shrugging.  

His cheeks had gone a little pink, and he kept glancing at Mack out of the corner of his eye and then ducking his head towards the ground again.  Mack grinned at him the next time he looked up, and a small, adorable smile broke across his face.  Mack really wanted to kiss him.

It was kind of horribly disappointing, to find someone smart and cute and (when he allowed himself to stop worrying about losing his words) funny seventy years after he’d died.  Fitz was exactly the kind of guy Mack could see himself having a relationship with, if things had been different.

But they weren’t different, and if things went to plan, these were Fitz’s last few hours as a ghost stuck in limbo.  He was going to move on that night, to wherever it was people went when they died, and Mack couldn’t be disappointed about _that_.  He wasn’t that selfish.

“We’ll need power,” Fitz said suddenly, after a few minutes of silence.

“What?” Mack asked, tumbling out of his own thoughts.

“To make the elevator run, we’ll need power,” Fitz repeated.

“Ah, shit, yeah,” Mack sighed. “Give me a minute to call Bobbi.  Hopefully this old place can still get power, after all these years.”

Bobbi cussed when he told her what they needed, annoyed at herself for not having thought of it sooner.

“I mean, I should have thought of it, too,” Mack sighed. “But we haven’t needed the power just yet, really, we’re still working on getting the circuit board in halfway decent shape.”

“Well, you better hurry,” Bobbi urged. “You’re down to the wire.  I’d come try to help, but Ward is being squirrelly and weird, insisting he doesn’t want to go to the hotel until later because he doesn’t want Skye to see him all old and whatever.  That guy is kinda creepy.”

“Yeah, really,” Mack sighed, glancing over at Fitz, who was frowning down at the elevator blueprints he’d liberated from his father’s office. “But he wants to help, and I think he’s pretty convinced that he knows what he’s talking about.  At any rate, it can’t hurt.”

“Right,” Bobbi sighed. “Anyway, I’ll call the power company and twist some arms.  Should be about twenty minutes.”

Mack considered laughing at her short time estimate, but he knew Bobbi pretty well.  If she said twenty minutes, he could comfortably assume that she meant business and she’d have the guys at the power company bowing to her every whim in no time.

…

Surely enough, fifteen minutes later as he was paying for his pizza at the end of the driveway (I’m not coming up there, man, that place is haunted!), there was a flash of flickering light and then large green neon letters spelling out “The Hollywood Tower Hotel” lit up the night high above them.  The pizza guy cussed and rushed off without his tip, as if electricity was something completely supernatural and terrifying.  

Mack took a minute to stare up at the sign, at one of the flickering ‘o’s in ‘Hollywood’ and the half-lit ‘e’ in ‘tower’.  It was a bit astonishing that the sign still worked at all, really, and Mack took it as a sign of faith.  After seventy years, some life had been brought back to the hotel, and it’s involuntary inhabitants were going to be free of it.  Of that he would be sure.

Most of the lamps and chandeliers inside worked as well, and Mack found himself questioning the decor now that he could see it properly.  Parts of it said ‘class’, while other parts (like the owl) said ‘hunting lodge for rich weirdos’.  He wasn’t so sure about Fitz’s father’s interior decorating skills, and he hoped Bobbi would update it a bit rather than sticking fanatically the original design.  At least get rid of the owl.

He was halfway through his third slice when suddenly music started to play through the speakers above the elevator.  As if it had summoned them, he was suddenly surrounded by the hotel’s five ghostly inhabitants, all of them staring sadly up at the speaker box.

“The party’s starting,” Skye said quietly, even though none of them needed an explanation.

“How can it be that late?” Mack asked, glancing down at his watch.  

It read 5:26, the same time it had read when he’d checked it on their way upstairs.  Clearly it had stopped working at some point, and he had been so consumed in thoughts of the elevator he hadn’t noticed.  He cussed and pulled his phone out to check the time instead, and the uncaring face revealed the time to actually be 7:02.  They had an hour and three minutes before the party would end for another year.

“Shit!” he exclaimed, dropping his pizza into the box and standing up. “We’ve gotta move, Fitz.”

“We’re not gonna make it, are we?” Skye asked, sounding sad but resigned.

“You’re gonna make it,” Mack promised, guilt bubbling in his stomach.  If only he’d paid more attention to the time… “I promise, you’re gonna make it.”

The clock above the check-in desk ticked the next minute loudly, as if to laugh at Mack’s optimism, and Phil shot him a sympathetic smile, like he felt bad for Mack instead of himself.  Mack wanted nothing more than to help them.  He _would_ help them.

The current song stopped playing and there was the sound of applause before the next one started.  It was Moonlight Serenade, a much slower song than the jazzy tune that had been played before.  Phil turned to Clint, who was perched on the couch staring down at the floor, and offered his hand.  Clint looked up at him, smiled, and then took his hand and let Phil pull him up and in close for a dance.  They moved together with an easy grace and a comfortable intimacy that Mack never would have guessed at, smiling softly at each other as they moved.

Skye smiled fondly at them as they danced across the lobby, and Mack found himself doing the same thing.  He didn’t know if they’d been in love with each other before they’d died, but it was very clear that they were now.  He was slightly comforted by the idea that they’d had each other over the decades.

“Come on, Fitz,” he said, finally tearing his eyes away from them, suddenly feeling like an intruder. “We’ve got work to do.”

They headed back down to the boiler room, which provided much better working conditions now that the lights were on again.  Still, they had their work cut out for them, and not much time at all to get it done.  Sharing a determined look, they nodded at each other and Mack went back to trying to fashion workable circuits out of old broken ones, tape, and hope.

* * *

 

At 7:58, Mack cussed creatively and jerked backwards as a shower of sparks burst forth from the circuit board in front of him in response to him pulling the lever to lower the elevator.

“God damn it!” he growled, smacking his palm against the wall.

“It’s all right, Mack,” Fitz said quietly. “It’s okay, there’s always next year.

“Yeah!” Skye piped up from her perch atop a stack of crates. “We’ve waited this long, we can wait a little longer.”  

She’d come down to watch them, insisting she was tired of watching Clint and Phil “make moon eyes at each other”, but Mack figured she was probably too worried and frustrated to stay up in the lobby listening to the party.

“You’ve waited long enough,” Mack growled, hating that he’d failed so badly.  They had seven minutes to make it to the party, and he just wasn’t going to be able to fix the elevator.  He turned to look when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and he was only a little surprised to see Bobbi emerge from the doorway.

“Hey,” she said, her eyes immediately landing on Fitz and sticking there. “We’re, uh...ready upstairs.  How about down here?”

“I don’t know,” Mack answered honestly, finding a loose wire and attacking it desperately with electrical tape.

“You’re Bobbi,” Fitz spoke up quietly, and Mack didn’t have to look away from the circuit board to know that she was at a loss for what to say.

“Yeah,” she answered finally. “And you’re Uncle Leo.”

The silence stretched on for a long moment, and then Bobbi blurted, “Grandma talked about you every day.  She never stopped missing you.”

“Yeah?” Fitz asked, his voice cracking just slightly.

“Yeah,” Bobbi answered with a watery smile. “But she had a great life.  She loved her husband and she had one son, my dad.  She named him Michael.  And I’m her only grandchild.  Um...she was 86 when she died, eight years ago, and it was really peaceful and all.  She just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.  But she loved you and she wanted to make sure I knew all about you.”

“Good,” Fitz said, his voice cracking. “Good, I’m glad.”

Mack took a glance at the time.  8:03.  This was pretty much his last chance.  He held his breath, flipped the circuit breaker, and pulled the lever.  There was a shrieking noise, followed by a loud groan, and Mack flinched back in anticipation of more sparks.

Instead, the elevator began to descend.

“Holy shit,” he said, staring up the shaft in disbelief.  “It’s coming down.”

“It’s coming down!” Skye yelled happily, hopping down off her perch.

“You did it!” Fitz exclaimed, and Mack grabbed him up in a bodily hug.

“ _We_ did it, man!  We did it!  You’re going to the party!”  

He realized suddenly that he’d lifted Fitz right off his feet (and that Fitz had managed to stay solid long enough for Mack to hug him) and he set him back down quickly.  Fitz’s hands rested on Mack’s forearms, and his touch felt ice cold and barely-there, more like a whisper than an actual connection.  They stared at each other for a long moment, and Mack seriously considered just leaning down and kissing him while he could, but Skye heaved a frustrated sigh at them.

“Not if we don’t get on the elevator!” Skye reminded them sharply, and then they were moving quickly, dashing up the stairs and into the lobby.  Phil, Clint, and Melinda were all standing in front of the open elevator doors, staring into the car as if they didn’t believe it was real.  Fitz hurried forward and was the first to step inside.  He took his position by the control lever and grinned at them.

“Going up,” he said cheekily, and that seemed to spur them into action.  They rushed forward in to the elevator, smiling at each other with nervous excitement, like they couldn’t believe it was really happening.

The clock read 8:04, and Mack was starting to get antsy that they wouldn’t actually make it to the party.  Then suddenly, as the doors began to slide shut, there was a loud crack of thunder and the clock spun back to 8:00.  Frowning, Mack looked at his phone and saw that it had gone back four minutes as well.

“Must be Ward’s spell,” he muttered to himself, because faintly he could hear the old man’s voice murmuring from the next room.

“Ward?” Skye demanded, her eyes wide and a little wild. “Grant Ward?”  

She stepped forward out of the elevator towards him and Mack, in a moment of insanity, rushed forward to push her back in. It was instinctual knowledge that they wouldn’t make it to the party if she wasn’t in the elevator with them, and he didn’t stop to think about the repercussions of his actions.  She didn’t stay solid like Fitz had earlier, and Mack stumbled straight through her and into the elevator, just barely managing to avoid getting crushed by the closing doors.

“Well, shit,” he said as they shut firmly behind him. “Open it back up, Fitz.”

Instead, the elevator started to rise.

“What are you doing, Fitz?” May demanded sharply. “We are not going to leave Skye behind!”

“I’m not doing anything,” Fitz said, frantically yanking at the control lever, which dutifully ignored him. “It’s going up by itself.”

“Great,” Clint muttered under his breath. “Knew it was too good to be true.”

Mack’s phone started to ring in his pocket, and when he saw it was Bobbi, he answered.

“You have to stop them from getting on the elevator!” she shouted, making him flinch and pull the phone away from his ear. “Skye is in here screaming at Ward.  He’s totally nuts!  Apparently he was her boyfriend and she dumped him, so seventy years ago he cursed the elevator to crash, except it didn’t work and now he’s done it right this time and _we helped him_!”

“Bobbi, it’s a bit late, the elevator has already gone up,” Mack said, feeling strangely calm despite knowing the elevator he was in was about to crash.

“Grant Ward, you good-for-nothing slimy bastard!” Mack heard Skye yell through the phone. “I should have known this was all your fault, I should have _known_!  You couldn’t take no for answer so I had to be _cursed_?”

“I loved you and you broke my heart!” Ward thundered back. “You needed to be punished!”

“ _Punished?_ ” Skye shrieked.  Mack didn’t hear what she said after that, because the elevator gave a loud screech and came to a grinding halt on the seventh floor.

“I got it!” Fitz said proudly.

“What was that noise? Bobbi demanded suddenly. “Mack...are you on the elevator?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mack answered, and the the elevator lurched and started rising once again.

“Or not,” Fitz muttered, going back to pulling ineffectually at the lever.

“Mack, what are you doing, you’re going to die!” Bobbi cried, her voice a little shrill. “That elevator is going to crash!”

“Well, there’s not much I can do about it, Bobbi!” he snapped. “It’s not like we can stop it, we’re _trying_.  Why don’t _you_ try and break this new curse?”

“I’m looking!” Bobbi snapped. “The only thing it says is that a spell of passion can only be countered by it’s contrary!”

“A spell of passion can only be countered by it’s contrary?” Mack repeated, raising his eyebrows. “That’s what Ward said yesterday, remember?  What does it mean?  What was the contrary to the curse?”

“I don’t know,” Bobbi answered miserably. “It could be anything?  Hatred, obsession, jealousy, I don’t know!”

The light for the eleventh floor dinged on and the elevator came to a shuddering halt once more, the lights flickered off and on, and it stayed still.  Mack heard another boom of thunder from outside and then his phone reception dropped off suddenly.

“What’s happening?” Phil demanded.  

He looked like he was desperate for even the tiniest bit of information, like somehow knowing what was going on would help him handle the situation better.  Clint just looked sullen and accepting of their fate, though Mack could see the way he’d looped his fingers around Phil’s wrist.  He wasn’t sure which of them it was supposed to comfort, but he hoped it was working.

“As far as I can tell, a man named Grant Ward was responsible for the elevator malfunction seventy years ago,” Mack explained, and May let out a noise that could only be described as a growl.

“I should have known that sociopath had something to do with all this,” she said darkly.

“He cursed the elevator to crash because Skye broke up with him, except he didn’t curse all of you, just her, and maybe Melinda, so it didn’t quite work.”

He tried to think of a simple way to explain to them that the worst thing that had ever happened to them hadn’t been meant for them at all.  That they’d only been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they would continue to be victims of that misfortune until nothing was left of them.  He took a deep breath and just tried to tell it as well as he understood it.

“Which is apparently why you’ve all been stuck here for so long, because a curse that was supposed to crash the elevator and send Skye to hell didn’t work right.  I guess now that Bobbi’s been up here a lot he saw it as his opportunity to get the curse right, so this elevator is going to crash in,” He glanced at his phone. “Two minutes.”

“We’ve got to get you out!” Fitz blurted, pressing the button for the doors desperately.

“The doors won’t open, remember?” Clint said, though he sounded regretful about it.

“Well,” Mack said, trying not to panic. “There’s no reason you all should have to stay.  You should do that disappearing thing you do, get away.”

“We couldn’t just leave you here,” Phil said, frowning at him like it was a ridiculous idea.

“Besides, it doesn’t work, I already tried,” Melinda added dryly.  Mack wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

“There’s an escape hatch!” Fitz said suddenly, sounding excited.  He dashed towards the back of the elevator, pulling a lever and then giving the wall a shove.  A small hatch swung open in the back wall, out into the elevator shaft.  Mack could see the tracks for the service elevator on the other side, and more importantly, the doors to the eleventh floor that would surely open, if he could get to them.

“I can’t jump that far,” he said with certainty.  

He glanced down the elevator shaft and immediately wished he hadn’t.  He wasn’t usually afraid of heights, but he certainly didn’t like the idea of trying to jump a long distance with that much space between him and the ground.

“You don’t have to,” Fitz said reasonably. “There’s a ladder on the...the…” he gestured to the left. “that side.  You can climb out and right down.  Go on, we haven’t got much time.”

“Well, you too, then,” Mack said desperately, even though he knew it was stupid.  They were all already dead, after all.

“I don’t think we can,” Fitz told him sadly, and to prove his point he tried to stick his hand out of the hatch.  His fingers stopped right at the opening, like there was some sort of invisible wall there that he couldn’t penetrate. “But you should go, Mack.  You’re still alive.”

“No,” Mack said decisively, moving away from the hatch. “I won’t just leave you here.”

It was stupid.  It was the most stupid thing he’d ever done.  It made no sense for him not to go.  It made no sense for him to stay there and die when he could escape and live.  It made no sense to stay out of solidarity and loyalty to people who were already dead, people who he’d just met the day before.  Logic said he should be scrambling out as quick as he could and hoping for the best, because it was better to die trying than to simply wait for death to claim him.

But he couldn’t do it.

Before anyone could make any more protests, there was a crack of thunder, a bright flash of green light, and the elevator was falling.  Their screams of terror all blended together as the elevator plunged, and Mack found himself grabbing Fitz on instinct, and shielding him from the impact with his body as they hit the ceiling of the elevator.  

His back had hardly touched the paneled ceiling when suddenly there was another flash of light, a bright gold one, and the elevator slowed to a gentle stop, and he was settling comfortably on the floor, wrapped around Fitz protectively.

The doors slid open to reveal Bobbi and Skye waiting in the lobby, no signs of Grant Ward anywhere.  Mack suspected, judging by the look on Skye’s face, that the old man wasn’t breathing so much anymore.

“You’re alive!” Bobbi exclaimed when she saw them, her eyes a little watery. “We weren’t sure what to do, we heard you all screaming and...I don’t understand, I thought you were dead!”

“A spell of passion can only be countered by it’s contrary,” Clint spoke up.  He was pressed into the back corner of the elevator, his arms wrapped tightly around Phil.  They both looked shaken. “Ward cursed Skye out of anger and selfishness.  Mack was selfless when he refused to leave us and tried to protect Fitz.  He broke the curse.”

“Mack, you idiot!” Bobbi raged, after a moment of ringing silence where they all digested Clint’s words. “Why would you refuse to leave?”

“Hey!” Mack said, offended. “I just broke a curse, okay?  Obviously I did all right.”

Bobbi opened her mouth to argue, but suddenly Mack heard music and the chatter of voices.  It was the speakerbox above the elevator.  It was the party.  Despite the fact that it was now 8:07, the party was still going.  Despite Ward’s best efforts, they hadn’t failed after all.

“I think you’ve got somewhere to be,” Mack said, stepping out of the elevator.  Skye grinned at him as they passed each other, and she took her place with the others.  They all smiled at each other nervously, until Skye turned to Mack and Bobbi with a wide grin.

“Come with us to the party,” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement and joy.

“Uh,” Mack said, staring dubiously at the elevator.  He didn’t think he’d ever forget that feeling of the whole world disappearing out from underneath him as the elevator dropped.

“We’ll take the stairs,” Bobbi promised, chuckling nervously.

“Next stop: the Tip Top Club,” Fitz announced, sounding official, and then he spared one last sweet smile in Mack’s direction before the elevator doors slid shut.  They didn’t wait a second before they were dashing up the stairs, practically racing each other to get to the top.

Somehow, as if by magic (a theory that Mack wasn’t totally writing off) they reached the twelfth floor around the same time the elevator did.  Even more amazingly, though, was the fact that there really was a whole party going on up there.  The room was crammed with people in period dress dancing, chatting, and sitting at tables.  There was a whole brass band set up along the far wall, and they finished their song as Skye and the others piled out of the elevator, looking simultaneously joyful and dizzy with relief.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” the conductor of the band said, turning to smile at them. “Ladies and Gentlemen, appearing in his long overdue singing debut, the Tip Top Club is proud to present Mr. Clint Barton!”

Everyone in the club burst into applause, and Clint ducked his head shyly for a moment before putting on a cocky strut and heading for the stage.  He nodded politely at people as he passed them, his neck and ears red with embarrassment.  Music began to play as he stepped on to the stage, and when he took his place in front of the microphone and began to sing a song about finding the boy of his dreams, he looked perfectly at home, like he was finally in the place he was meant to be.

Mack glanced around to find the rest of them and he saw Phil watching Clint sing fondly from a place near the stage.  He kept looking around until he found Skye, who was hugging a man and woman who must have been her parents tightly, tears streaming down her face, and Melinda watching with a satisfied smile.  Fitz sidled up next to him, smiling triumphantly.

“We did it,” he said happily. “We got them here.”

“Yeah,” Mack said. “We did.”

“I wanted to thank you,” Fitz said quietly. “For...with the...you didn’t give up.  And for...in the elevator.”

“You’re welcome,” Mack told him and, since it would certainly be his last chance, he leaned down and kissed Fitz softly on the mouth.  

He heard Bobbi snickering quietly next to him but he ignored her, focusing on the feel of Fitz kissing him back gently, like he was afraid Mack might break.  Fitz’s face was a lovely shade of pink when he pulled away, and Mack found himself regretting again that they were just two ships passing in the harbor.  He had the feeling that they could have had something great together, in another life.

Bobbi gasped loudly, then, and he tore his eyes away from Fitz’s face to look at her.  She, however, was staring past them.  He turned to look and saw a pretty young woman and an older man standing together, grinning and waving.

“Da!” Fitz exclaimed joyfully. “Jemma!” he rushed at them and they caught him in a huge group hug.  

Mack turned to look back at Bobbi, who was staring at them uncertainly with a wistful expression.  Mack knew she’d never met her great-grandfather, and she didn’t really know Fitz, but he also knew she’d regret it if she didn’t take the chance to talk to them while she could.

“You should go say hi,” Mack prodded her. “You’ll never get the chance again.”

She glanced at him for a second, and then the uncertainty melted from her face to be replaced by a stubborn expression.  She squared her shoulders and headed towards her family.  Jemma, her grandmother, held her arms out for a hug as Bobbi drew near.

Mack sat back to listen to Clint sing, a sheepish grin crossing his face as he sang the last few bars and the audience started making appreciative sounds for him again.  The audience was still clapping and hollering for him as Phil got up on the stage as well, looking a little nervous, a small black box clutched in his hands.

“Forgive me for interrupting,” he said to the room at large and then he focused all of his attention on Clint.

“We’ve spent seventy years together,” Phil started, his voice soft. “And I’d spend another seventy with you, if I could.  Clint, will you marry me?” He held up the box to show Clint a ring, and Clint grinned and then nodded vigorously as Phil slipped a plain silver band onto his finger.  They hugged each other tightly, and then they started to glow with a bright white light.  

Around the room, Skye, Melinda, and Fitz began to glow as well, and the light grew brighter and brighter until it filled the whole room.  When the light disappeared, the room was left looking as it should have, decorated for the party, but covered in seventy years of dust and cobwebs.  The band was gone, and all the ghosts, except five.

“I don’t understand,” Skye said, looking around at the rest of them.  

Clint and Phil were standing close together, still enamoured in the happiness of their engagement but quickly losing their smiles as they realized they hadn’t passed on like they should have.  Melinda was scowling, and Fitz was looking longingly at the place where his sister had stood a moment before.

“We made it to the party,” Skye said, a little louder, sounding like she might cry. “Why are we still here?”

“Maybe it’s part of the curse?” Bobbi asked uncertainly. “Maybe it’s not broken after all…”

“No…” Melinda said slowly, looking down at her hands like she’d never seen them before. “I think we might be alive.”

There was a long pause and then murmurs of agreement as they all checked themselves out.  Skye kept pinching her own arm, flinching with pain, and then pinching harder as if to make sure it was actually pain she’d felt.

“I think she might be right,” Phil spoke up. “I can’t disappear from here.  I feel...heavy.  Solid.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Clint said, and headed for a window. “We could never leave before, even to go outside.  So…”

He pushed open the window, with a bit of a heavy shove, and then stuck his hand out and waved it around.  He leaned forward more until his whole arm was out, and he might even have gone as far as to stick his whole head out if Phil hadn’t grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away.

“I don’t understand,” Bobbi said. “I just...how is this possible?  You’re dead and then you’re not?”

“Well,” Mack said thoughtfully, glancing around at the decrepit room. “They never actually found any bodies, did they?”

“What?” Bobbi asked sharply.

“I mean, the big mystery of the Hollywood Tower Hotel was that these guys just disappeared without a trace.  There were never any bodies, but people just eventually assumed that they’d died.  And since they were ghosts, we all did too.  But maybe…”

“Maybe it was part of how Grant’s curse went wrong,” Skye said thoughtfully. “Instead of dying we just...were gone.  We weren’t alive but we weren’t dead.  And now the curse is broken and we got to the party like we were supposed to and...we’re back the way we’re supposed to be.”

“Okay,” Clint said slowly, glancing at Phil anxiously. “But now what?  What do we do?  The only records left of us say we should all be extremely old right now.  We don’t exist in this new world.”

“I know a guy,” Bobbi said cryptically, and Mack had no doubt she really did know a guy. “He can make whole identities for you.  After that, all you can do is try to live your lives, I guess.  Seize the second chance, and all.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Fitz asked, sounding small and uncertain.

“Don’t worry about it so much,” Mack said, trying not to look to pleased because he knew the five former-ghosts were on the edges of panic. “We’ll help you out.”

**One Year Later**

“Hollywood Tower Re-Opens,” Fitz read aloud from the front page of the LA Times. “Cousins Leopold Fitz and Barbara Morse, the last living relatives of Fergus Fitz, hosted the long-awaited re-opening of the Hollywood Tower Hotel last night, and the celebration was a smashing success.”

“Woo!” Bobbi cheered, popping the cork out of a bottle of champagne. “A _smashing_ success, you hear that?  We are going to be _so_ rich, Uncle Leo!”

Fitz rolled his eyes and accepted the champagne flute Bobbi practically forced on him with good grace.  The party in the Tip Top Club the night before really had been an amazing one, on par with the ghostly one they’d attended exactly a year before, when an elevator full of ghosts had become real live people again.

“I think they really liked Clint,” Fitz said, and he wasn’t wrong.  

Clint had done a whole set the night before, and he’d been received extremely well.  He’d agreed to be a headliner for the Hollywood Tower until he was swept off to bigger and greater things, and Mack knew his presence would only be an asset.  Particularly with Phil’s managerial skills on their side.

Once Bobbi’s “friend” had pulled through with some solid identities for them and laid down paper trails with enough history to not arouse any suspicion, the five of the had started trying to lay down new lives for themselves.  Clint was still invested in the idea of a singing career, and Phil seemed content to work behind the scenes to support Clint in that respect.

Skye had started auditioning for roles again, with Melinda was acting as her manager and legal guardian.  She hadn’t had much luck yet, but apparently people often were amazed about how much she resembled Skye Shine.  Skye always shrugged and said she didn’t see it.

Fitz had decided to take up the mantle that he’d always been meant to have, and he had Bobbi had teamed up to re-open the Hollywood Tower Hotel.  It had taken a year and a ton of work, but if the LA Times’ assessment was one to be believed, it had clearly been worth it.

Mack glanced away from Bobbi’s happy-money-dance to see that Fitz had drifted away from their little celebration party and was standing in front of the elevator doors, staring up at the floor indicator on top.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked quietly, nudging Fitz’s arm with his own.

“Fine,” Fitz answered, frowning thoughtfully.  He leaned against Mack’s side, and Mack slid his arm around him, pulling him close. “Just...reflecting on how my life turned out.”

“A lot different than you expected, I guess,” Mack said, used to Fitz’s random moments of reflection and melancholy after a year of dating.

“In some ways, it’s exactly the same,” Fitz admitted.

“And in others?” Mack pressed, knowing there was something Fitz was trying to figure out how to say.

“In others, it’s much better,” Fitz said, and when he turned his adorable smile up at him, Mack couldn’t help but lean down to kiss his boyfriend soundly on the mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're feeling the sudden need to go watch this movie again (or for the first time!) it's on youtube right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW2ds8Kk9YE  
> It's literally the BEST movie ever as long as you don't think too hard or apply much logic.


End file.
